Did you know? This guide has been revamped and is now available for Amazon Kindle!
Find it here: Catching Up to the Internet
Part Two of The Small Business Website Guide for Business Owners
Welcome to the second episode of the Guide series I am working on to help business owners learn what their website is (or should be) all about. This Guide walks you through the [why you need a website]({{ site.url }}/small-business-website-guide-why-are-websites-important "Websites for small business: Why are they important?"), how to plan ahead before starting your business website, what to look for when choosing a website design, and how to handle things during the project. We will also be going over basics for getting started in internet marketing.
Here's a quick overview of our chapter on how to prepare to have the best website for small business:
- Define your website's purpose
- Define your target audience
- Choose your voice based on your target audience
- Design your website workflow
- Write your content to suit your purpose, audience and workflow
Planning for the best business website, ever.
One of the biggest pitfalls to creating a website is how easy and inexpensive it is to get one up and running. Even if you don't think it's easy or inexpensive (even though it can be), you would be surprised at how little thought often goes in the the creation of a website.
Because it's so easy, many beginning website owners (and even seasoned website owners) tend to overlook the importance of having a great plan in place. Part of the reason is most likely because websites are still new territory for many people. That doesn't mean that a website should be treated like a last-minute lunch purchase. It should be treated like a whole new branch of business, and every successful business comes with a plan.
The best websites have a definable purpose.
So you want a website. Why? "Because my friends told me I needed one" or "To be competitive with my industry" are not acceptable answers. Sure, those may be true, but you need to figure out why you really need a website.
Here are some good purpose statements for a website:
- My website's main purpose is to support existing customers through loyalty benefits and easy to find answers to FAQ.
- My website's main goal is to attract new customers who live locally to my business.
- My website's main intention is to sell my products online to new customers nation-wide.
See how these directly correlate to benefiting your small business? Once you've defined a reason for your website to exist in the first place, you can use this clear purpose to guide all your decision making during the life of your website.
If you need help choosing a great reason for your website to exist, make sure you've read the first episode of this guide on [why small business websites are so important]({{ site.url }}/small-business-website-guide-why-are-websites-important "Small Business Websites").
A target audience will give you something to aim for.
{: .float-right} Aim for your target audience for maximum effect.
Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/london/
You might have noticed we used some general language above for our website's purpose. That was not ideal, as that will not help us guide our actions through the decision making stages of creating a website.
The next step is to refine your target audience. Do you sell doggie accessories? Maybe your target audience is stay at home dog owners. Do you sell car parts? Perhaps you're looking for auto mechanics.
Narrow down your target audience as far as you can, including language, region, job-type, gender and expected education level. These things will all help you understand your audience much better in order to cater to their specific needs.
Speak the right language to your audience.
Guess what? Now that you know who you're talking to, you get to pick the right Voice to use when addressing them. For example - if you know that your audience is mostly made of auto mechanics, you need to brush up on your car lingo to make sure you're speaking their language. If you're advertising locally, you can specifically reference specific landmarks, history or whatever is locally relevant to help you gain a common ground.
If your target audience is men, you will want to have shorter, factual sentences with a list of specifications. If your target audience is women, you will want to use words that describe the feeling and emotional benefits that come with your service or product.
See how you haven't even written a word of content but you're already getting a feel for how you're going to need to write it to be effective? This is the importance of defining your target audience.
Guide your customers through your website to lead them to your goal.
Remember how we defined a goal for your website? Now is the time to design a workflow your customers should follow when they get to your site.
Here is an example of the desired workflow for a new website visitor for a business whose goal is to gain new local clients online:
- Land on the home page
- Read more about Services
- Contact us through the contact page
Here's an example of the desired workflow for a visitor for a business whose goal is to offer rewards to existing customers:
- Land on the home page
- Visit the Loyalty Program information page
- Sign up for online Loyalty Program
Once you create this type of workflow for your own business, you can then design each of those pages to lead to the next step of the workflow. For the first example, the home page would be an introduction with links all directed towards the Services page to drive traffic to that next step. In our second example, the home page will feature Loyalty Program information and include links to click that lead to more information on the Loyalty Program.
The second pages would then lead to the final and third step, the Take Action step. Think Hook, Line and Sinker. Catch their eye with highlights on your first page, tell them more information on the second and then call for action on the third.
Adding everything together: a purpose driven website aimed at the right target.
When you add together a purpose, a target and a spelled out route to the goal you have suddenly gone from Aimless Website to Effective Marketing Tool.
It's time to sit down and create the content of your website. Each page should be designed with these things in mind:
- The goal of that specific page (is this the Hook, Line or Sinker page?)
- The goal of the website (are you selling to a new client or trying to gain loyalty from an existing one?)
- The target audience of your website (making sure to speak the same Voice as your customer)
By using the above rules for your guide, you will be able to create content for a website that speaks to your customers and works towards a singular goal. Suddenly a website doesn't sound so pointless anymore, does it?
Planning for your website isn't so scary after all, is it?
Now that you have a solid guide to prepping for your website, things shouldn't feel so strange and random anymore. If you'd like anything cleared up, you can leave a comment on this post or contact me with your questions or suggestions and I will reply to you or update the post as necessary to address your concerns.
For more good information from [the Small Business Website Guide for Business Owners]({{ site.url }}/category/guide/the-small-business-website-guide-for-business-owners "Small Business Website Guide"), be sure to stay tuned as the next post will be going up Thursday morning! If you're new to the series, make sure to read the first post: [Websites for Small Business: Why are they important?]({{ site.url }}/small-business-website-guide-why-are-websites-important "Websites for small business")